


It Won’t Be Easy but I’ll Try

by amycarey



Series: To Sir With Love [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Curse, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Angst, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 12:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1941666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amycarey/pseuds/amycarey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina never thought she'd find someone after Daniel died but with Emma Swan she's wondering if it's possible to get a second chance at a happy ending.</p><p>Sequel to 'From Crayons to Perfume'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Won’t Be Easy but I’ll Try

**Author's Note:**

> For Aryousavvy - and for tumblr folks and the lovely people who commented on and gave kudos to 'From Crayons to Perfume'.

Regina was five when she met Daniel Stableton. He was the smallest kid in her kindergarten class and a couple of boys took it upon themselves during their first week to push him around. Regina was the tallest girl in kindergarten and she and Kathy ruled the playground. She pushed the boys over and helped Daniel up. “You can be our friend,” she said, brushing dirt off his clothes, and Kathy grinned at him. Daniel didn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.

 

Regina was eleven when she told Daniel they were going to get married when they grew up. All the other boys in her class were total goobers but Daniel was okay. “Okay, Reggie,” he said peaceably.

 

“Don’t call me that,” she grumbled. “You’ll have to take my surname,” she added because she liked being Regina Mills thankyouverymuch and Regina Stableton was a _terrible_ name.

 

“Sure thing, Reggie,” Daniel replied, worming his little hand into hers and she didn’t pull away.

 

She was fifteen when Daniel kissed her for the first time. It was chaste and sweet and his lips were soft and after he stopped he apologised. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, looking at his feet and blushing scarlet and twisting his hands together.

 

“Shut up,” she hissed and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him back, feeling the press of his lips against hers and his heart beating wildly against her own body.

 

She was seventeen when her mother found out that they were dating and forbade her from seeing him. She was unsuccessful. Regina snuck out of her bedroom every night, clambered down the old oak tree by her window and jumped in Daniel’s souped up old Ford that he’d fixed up himself in his dad’s workshop. They’d drive to the sea and kiss and talk and argue and make up.

 

They had sex for the first time in that car.

 

Regina was nineteen when she proposed to Daniel. She was home from college late, a brutal afternoon in the library finishing an essay, no lunch and some asshole on the bus who thought it was acceptable to use racial slurs because she dared to ask him to turn his music down. Despite working in at the dingy student coffee shop from six, Daniel had started dinner. She collapsed on the one sofa in the living room of their grotty one-bedroom apartment.

 

When he handed her a bowl of pasta, she actually moaned at the smell of tomatoes and spices and onion and it just came out. “Marry me.”

 

“Okay,” he said, grin spreading so wide across his face she thought it might split. Dinner had gone cold by the time they got to it, distracted by more pleasurable activities.

 

She was twenty-one when they got married. She wore white because her mother made her but she snuck on a pair of red high heels (“harlot heels,” her mother called them but her eyes misted up when she placed the veil down over her face in lieu of her recently deceased father) because she’d never much liked white.

 

Daniel told her at the altar that he was changing his surname to Mills. “Never really cared about Stableton anyway,” he said when she smiled at him, eyes shining.

 

“You are getting so lucky tonight,” she whispered and the celebrant had to shush them because Daniel couldn’t stop laughing.

 

She was twenty-three when she found out she was infertile. “Reggie?” Daniel whispered from one side of the bathroom door. “Can I come in?”

 

She lay in the bath, the water long since gone lukewarm. She felt numb and when Daniel came in, because she hadn’t answered and he was worried, he drained the bath, scooped her out (and since when did the smallest child in her kindergarten class have those arms?) and carried her to bed, where he patted her down with a towel, dressed her in pyjamas and tucked her into bed.

 

“I love you, Regina Mills,” Daniel said, curling up beside her. His presence comforted her, his warm breath on her neck, his large hands stroking her back and stomach.

 

“You shouldn’t,” she said, wooden. “I’m broken.”

 

Daniel’s fingers wove through her hair, loose and tangled from the moisture. “I’ve been in love with you since you beat up three boys in kindergarten for me. It’s engrained in me now.”

 

She was twenty-five when Emma Swan came into their life. Daniel had often joked about the huge crush Emma had on her, singing ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ whenever she mentioned Emma’s progress or talked about her concerns for the girl. He liked the girl though; called her kiddo, joked around with her.

 

And then Emma handed her precious baby boy to them and Regina thought she might actually faint. He was so perfect, small and pink and completely and utterly theirs.

 

She was twenty-seven when Daniel didn’t come home.

 

This was when Regina Mills gave up on any love that wasn’t centred on the one good thing in her life.

 

So waking up next to Emma Swan for the first time six weeks into what has become something of a relationship is not something she could have anticipated. Emma mumbles and throws an arm across Regina’s chest and she tries to fight the bubbles of panic rising to her chest. _It’s too soon, she’s betraying Daniel’s memory, Emma will realise she’s fucked up and broken._

 

“Hey you,” Emma murmurs, golden hair sleep-tossed and eyes heavily lidded.

 

“Hi,” Regina says, voice croaky. Emma’s so young, so pretty. She’s an ex-student. She makes her feel things she hasn’t felt for eight years, things she has had locked tight in her heart, behind high walls.

 

“Stop freaking out,” Emma says, turning on her side. Her fingers ghost Regina’s shoulder and she tries not to shiver at the touch, however light.

 

“I’m not.” She twists until she’s on her back, staring at the cream of her ceiling. The paint’s chipping away in one corner; she’ll have to get someone in to repaint. Perhaps it’s time to redecorate completely, rid the house of her mother’s stifling presence altogether.

 

“Liar.” She leans over and kisses the scar on Regina’s upper lip. Emma has become rapidly obsessed with the scar, formed when Regina was so young that the details are hazy. She kisses it and touches it and last night she sucked at Regina’s upper lip while plying pressure on her clit with her thumb until Regina completely fell apart. “You know you don’t have to lie to me.”

 

Regina looks up at her; Emma’s eyes are wide and honest and flecked with green. Though the rest of her has aged, her eyes are the same as they were when Regina taught her English all those years ago. Those same eyes used to stare at her with admiration when she thought Regina wasn’t watching. Those same eyes filled with tears when Regina followed her into the bathrooms that day that precipitated so much change in Regina’s life. She could stare into them for days. “It’s all new to me,” she says. “Since Daniel there’s been no one.” She’d always thought you got one chance at love and she’d used hers up, so she’d never really bothered to try. She’s starting to wonder if second chances are possible.

 

Emma knows this. They’ve talked a lot over the past six weeks; about Daniel, about Henry, about the past ten years they’ve missed… “This is new to me too,” she says. Emma has spoken of a series of short lived flings and one night stands since her relationship with Neal at seventeen. Regina is closed off and Emma has trust issues. Regina gets angry and Emma runs away. They make quite the ridiculous pair. “But we could make this whole thing old hat if you wanted.”

 

Regina sits up on her elbows, sheet falling away and baring her narrow frame. She doesn’t miss Emma’s eyes skirting downwards to her small breasts, brown nipples hardening in the sudden chill. “Oh?” she says. “And how’s that?”

 

“I think you know,” Emma says. She lets her tongue slide between her teeth, wetting her lips. Her eyes narrow. Their mouths meet, lazy at first and then fierce, and Regina’s panic washes away because kissing her feels so very right, the most right she’s felt since Daniel kissed her goodnight and left for work that final time.

 

Emma’s hand curls through her short hair. She used to wear it long because Daniel loved it so much and she loved how much he loved it but she’s never had much patience for styling it, especially not when she was parenting a toddler alone. Regina’s own hands rise up and drift across Emma’s body, knuckles brushing her nipples, before they drift lower, fingers skimming her belly. Emma is all coiled muscle and velvety skin, and she responds to every touch, with breathy sighs and moans.

 

When Regina lets her fingers tease the curls at the apex of her thighs, Emma presses her body into Regina’s, one thigh slipping between Regina’s legs. Seizing the opportunity, Regina flips them over, kissing and nipping at Emma’s neck, tasting the salt in her skin, before moving lower. She caresses the stretch marks, the white indents barely visible at her hips, kissing each one. “I love these,” she murmurs.

 

Emma laughs and pushes Regina away from her hips. “Stop being a weirdo.” She’s strangely self-conscious about her stretch marks, evidence, Regina suspects, of vulnerability about a time in her life she would rather forget. Regina wishes she understood how much they mean to her. They are proof of the gift Emma gave Regina and Regina would spend more time worshiping them if she didn’t know Emma would flinch away.

 

So she moves lower still, kissing her inner thighs and moving towards where Emma most wants her, before pressing a light kiss against Emma’s clit. Emma’s fingers twist into Regina’s hair so hard it almost hurts and her hips buck up to meet Regina’s mouth. “God,” Emma hisses. “Stop. Fucking. Teasing.”

 

Regina licks in earnest, tasting Emma, letting her senses overwhelm her and she can’t think of anything else but her mouth on Emma and her heart pounding in her ears and Emma’s thighs clenching around her head.

 

Emma is beautiful when she comes, back arching, feet curling and a strangled groan escaping her lips. When she opens her eyes, she glares at Regina. “Asshole. I was going to do that to you.”

 

“There’s still time,” Regina says, crawling up to curl against Emma’s shoulder, pressing soft kisses against her damp skin. But then she hears the sound of footsteps in the hall and Henry’s voice.

 

“It’s Sunday! It’s pancakes day.” Henry bangs on her door.

 

“We’ll be out in a minute, dear,” Regina calls.

 

Henry’s response is, “ew,” before he bounds downstairs, footsteps fading.

 

Emma grins at her and Regina will never get tired of seeing that smile. “We?”

 

“He was going to figure out you slept over when we went downstairs anyway,” Regina says, attempting nonchalance though aware that this is a huge step for all of them. She takes two deep breaths, tamping down the panic boiling to the surface again. Henry’s okay with them, she knows he is. He likes Emma, loves that his mom and his birth mother are seeing each other and wants her to be happy, first and foremost.

 

“And you’re okay with this?” Emma asks.

 

“I’ve shut a lot of people out of my life since Daniel died,” Regina says. ”I’m tired, Emma. I want to try opening those doors again.”

 

“Very poetic, Ms Mills,” Emma says, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and standing. “Great use of metaphor.” Still naked, the light filtering through the gap in the curtains paints her skin golden. Regina lies back and looks at her, eyes following the curve of her neck, down her back to the curve of her buttocks and the lean, muscled legs as Emma stretches, arms above her head. She has the way of puncturing Regina’s darkest thoughts with her idiotic comments and Regina kind of loves it.

 

“Thank you, dear,” she says, getting up. “Go and have a shower.”

 

Emma disappears into the bathroom and Regina pulls on underwear and wraps a robe around herself, before padding into Henry’s bathroom to brush her teeth and attempt to tame her hair. Downstairs in the kitchen, Henry has assembled the ingredients for pancakes on the bench and is starting to measure out flour. “Thank you, darling,” she says, ruffling his hair and turning on the coffee to brew.

 

“So, Emma slept over,” Henry observes.

 

“Does that bother you?”

 

“No, so long as you don’t tell me any details,” he says. “She’s cool, Mom. A bit flaky but she’s good for you. She makes you smile.”

 

Emma comes downstairs, hair freshly washed and in yesterday’s clothing. “Who makes what smile?”

 

“Nothing, dear,” Regina says. “Help Henry with the pancakes, will you?”

 

Emma wraps her arms around Regina’s waist first and presses a kiss into her hair. “Hey, beautiful.”

 

Regina knows it won’t be easy. There’s school to deal with because teachers dating can be problematic. There’s ten years of buried grief on both sides. There’s their capacity to know exactly what to say or do to hurt one another. There are Regina’s walls and Emma’s running and trust issues on both sides. There is Henry who may think that he’s okay with this all but could change his mind at any moment because as well-adjusted as he thinks he is adopted children often experience trauma.

 

But for the first time, she can see a future beyond Daniel and it’s a future that makes her feel like smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is what happens when it's horrible weather and you're watching the entirity of 'Firefly' in one day with your father - I'm incapable of NOT multitasking.


End file.
